Lesson VI The Ministry of the Word

THE QUESTION of the Word of God, its character and office, its relation to man, is one widely discussed by the theological world.

2. The statement made by John at the opening of his Gospel is of deep metaphysical import; it has always been a stumblingblock to believers in a personal God. Only one who understands mind, its laws and its inherencies, can grasp the relation between God and His word, as here presented by John.

3. It is interpreted to mean Jesus of Nazareth; and so it does, in a free application of a universal consciousness manifesting itself through an individual. But this is a limited view of the question and does not touch the vital points of the Word and its relation to man and all other aspects of creation.

4. John says: "All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made." But this does not cover the point; it omits to state that there is a vital connection still

5. This is where theology has wandered away from the very present, sentient, and vitally active Spirit permeating all things, man not excepted. It is here also that the very essence of the pure metaphysical doctrine propounded and demonstrated by Jesus has its greatest virtue. It is not a doctrine of "has been," not a statement of creation in post mortem terms. It lives with the life and vigor that is in no wise lost in the recital of what occurred in the misty past and that cannot be defeated by speculations of what may occur in the problematical future.

6. Jesus was imbued with a spirit purely His own. He did not borrow His mission, or His words, or His precepts from Egypt, Persia, or India. He was a genius that burned with His own wick and oil. He was not a child of tradition, nor did He allow the muggy thought of Jewry to befog His midday Mind. He was not a Son of God by proxy, but appeared in person and presented His heavenly credentials. There was not in His whole history and ministry a loophole for the belief in absence or apartness of God. Herein lies the appropriateness of our claim upon Him as a forerunner of the doctrine that we advocate. He is our Elder Brother, and to Him we are indebted for the clearest presentation of spiritual science that has ever been given to the world.

7. The presentation of a doctrine has a large influence upon its acceptance. Some persons think it is only necessary to talk religion in flowing words

and heavenly tones. That is one way, but Jesus did not adopt it. His presentation is peculiar in that it carries with it, and illustrates by its works, a basis more enduring than mere metaphysical presumption.

8. The imagination will carry out any idea or set of ideas that the I AM reflects into it, hence theories are not to be trusted. There must be evidence in works. To produce works, there must be a working power. This is exactly what the Word is--the working power of God.

9. Every known process has its regular advancing steps from inception to conclusion, and these steps are taken according to recognized principles.

10. The student of languages must have intelligence as a base of operation; next he must have ideality; and next, expression. To leave out one of these factors is to thwart the end sought.

11. Who can learn a language without the ideal upon which to form his concepts? Then who can use that language without the word through which to convey to the listening ear the inner ideal?

12. Herein is the Word of God prototyped. It is that which conveys to the world the concepts of the Most High. It is not the Most High in His wholeness, but it carries with it the power behind the throne, because "these three are one"--the Father (Principle), the Son (the Ideal), and the Holy Ghost (the Formative Word).

13. These three are also minimized in each individual, and through every ego is being poured all the power of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost just to the extent that the ego recognizes, acknowledges

and appropriates them. They are in the world as omnipresent Principle, having an abiding place everywhere, because they are as ubiquitous as the air. No man lives a moment without them, yet few men recognize them: "The light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not."

14. "There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John." This is a step from darkness to light. John is the illumined intellect turned toward the creative light. It is not that light itself, but bears witness of that light; recognizes it, and proceeds to clear the way; tears down the walls of darkness that shut that light from the view of the purblind ego, blinded not from choice, but by its own conceits. This is the darkness into which the light shines, and in which it is not comprehended.

15. But John bore witness of the light. Whosoever testifies in favor of Truth, though he be far removed from its brightness, is its friend and is making straight the way for its full blaze into his consciousness.

16. Light in the Scriptures always means intelligence; hence that which shines into the consciousness and is not comprehended by it is the clear revealing, on the plane of Spirit, of that higher Truth which Spirit alone comprehends.

17. To catch this light in his understanding, man must rise out of the sense state into the realm of free ideas. Here is where the Word does its work; here it is that "all things were made through him [the Word]; and without him was not anything made that hath been made."

18. Outside of pure metaphysics (and by pure metaphysics is meant a clear understanding of the realm of ideas and their legitimate expression) there can be no correct interpretation of this peculiar statement: "Without him was not anything made that hath been made." This implies that there is a making that is not legitimate--not in accordance with principle inherent in Being.

19. Those who have made a study of Mind from an independent standpoint, those who have opened themselves to the influx of original ideas from Spirit, have discovered, in a manner inexplicable to mortal sense, that there are apparent creations that are not creations at all, being but transitory formations that lose their cohesion and dissolve when their mental support is withdrawn.

20. These formations are produced by the mind working independently of its wisdom sphere. They are not permanent because they lack that which is essential to the permanent--harmony. There can be no creation without a creator; there being but one Creator, there can be but one creation.

21. God is the origin of all, and from him, in orderly steps through His perfect idea (Son) and His wise builder (Holy Ghost) all creation proceeds.

22. The Son (man) looks to the Father for all instruction, and the Father responds to the Son's demands by sending forth the Holy Spirit equipped with the wisdom and power necessary to perform the work.

23. Man stands in the Godhead as the imaging faculty. He gives form, outline, condition, relation

to the infinite possibilities of the formless; but the formless knows how it should be formed to be enduring, and this knowledge is communicated to man, along with the power to form, when he looks for it and acknowledges it. His failure to ask for this wisdom does not nullify his formative powers, however, because he is by nature the formative faculty of Being.

24. Hence, when man ignores the wisdom of Spirit and proceeds to build his world independently, he seems to make many states and conditions that are not made at all; they are merely malformations, and must of necessity fall to pieces of their own disproportion.

25. All states are mental states. There is nothing else in all the universe, visible or invisible. Whoever images anything else is throwing on the screen of his universe the crude pictures of an uninspired mentality. Such pictures last for a season, but their own discords are their final destruction.

26. So in the very nature of things a way must exist whereby man may form his consciousness in harmony and consequent permanency. That way is in and through his acknowledgment of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God.

27. Mind is that quality of Being that knows. It is pure knowing, and he who cultivates it becomes so filled with understanding that he intuitively perceives the right of every question or proposition submitted to him. He does not have to study books or have experience in the realm of things.

worldly-wise of Judea. They wondered where He, never having studied letters, got His understanding. But He did not claim to have wisdom of Himself; He recognized its true source in the Father: "The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me."

29. Everyone coming into conscious recognition of the mind of Spirit knows that he knows, without having learned through any of the avenues recognized by the intellectual man as necessary. It is not a system of reasoning from premise to conclusion, but a direct summing up of the whole case in omnipresent knowing.

30. The why and wherefore of this may be explained to those who have, in even a small measure, disentangled the ego from the sense mind. It requires a degree of familiarity with principles. If you can comprehend a state where pure Mind exists free from the limitations of time, space, and condition, you can grasp in a degree the working field of pure knowing.

31. There is within every man such a place--the "secret place of the Most High." When man finds this place and accepts its privileges as his, he is let into the realm of pure metaphysics, where Mind alone with all its transcendent powers holds free, untrammeled sway. This is the point in every man where God joins hands with him, and where the Word of God finds entrance into his consciousness. It is here that man understands what it is to be inspired by the Spirit to say and do things extraordinary in the sight of the world.

32. Simon Magus tried to buy the secret of this superior magic, but found that he could not. It is not for sale for a money consideration. It can be had only for love and obedience. He who would have fruit from the tree of life must reach up and get it. He must aspire to it first, and then in prayer and true word act as if he had already received it; he must go right ahead preaching the gospel, healing the sick, and doing the other commandments of the Master exactly as if he were already filled with the Holy Ghost.

33. When the disciples of Jesus wanted to restrain one from doing works in His name, He said, "Forbid him not." So everyone who goes ahead and does the very best that he knows, in the name of the Most High Good, will by virtue of his works draw down upon himself the baptism of the Holy Ghost--the Word of God.

34. In the Scriptures the Word of God is usually personified, indicating self-consciousness. He who acknowledges the self-conscious character of the Word is led as by One who knows all the affairs of his life--aye, his most secret thoughts.

35. Thus this Word of God is the revelation to man of the powers and possibilities of his own being. It is the light that brings to his notice the inner mechanism of his soul and his body. Where he externally sees only flesh, blood, and bones, the searchlight of this Word discloses the presence of secret springs and living streams of energy and life. Man awakens from his dream of sense and begins to visit the different rooms in the temple in which

he has lived but of which he knows so little. This he is permitted to do through the "light which lighteth every man, coming into the world."

36. When man's consciousness is lifted up by this wisdom Word, he finds himself master of the powers and privileges of infinity. He then says, with Jesus, "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth." These are the privileges of the sons of God, and every man is a son of God.

37. But to be or not to be rests upon the immutable law of the Word of God, for only by the light that it sheds can man see and appropriate the privileges that are his by original birth. Only those who receive Him become in fact the sons of God.